


Life Isn't a RomCom

by NightBearrors



Category: Adventure Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-27 15:51:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13884108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightBearrors/pseuds/NightBearrors
Summary: Another old thing from tungler





	1. Chapter 1

You haven’t seen her for a while, but it stirs something hot in your gut when she laughs at some unheard joke. You tell yourself to stop staring as you take a swig of your almost-gone beer.

Her back is exposed in that dress and you remember those shoulder blades; how sometimes your nails would pull against them; how they would shift and slide so beautifully beneath the muscle and how if you kissed them just right it would elicit such a heavenly sigh from their owner’s lungs. But there are no marks left now; her skin is as smooth as it had been before your touch. The thought makes your stomach sour and you place your empty bottle down with an unhelpful thud.

She sees you then and your breath threatens to hitch as you see recognition wash over her; her smile falters and she glances to her companions before excusing herself.

She comes toward you and she is exactly as you remember; elegant and confidant and so beautiful, but there’s an extra burn in your head now that makes everything feel wrong and off and suffocating. You don’t want to see her; her hair is pulled up in a neat bun and it exposes the length of her neck you used to know so well. You used to beg her to put her hair up, just so you could admire the expanse of skin, run your lips along it to make her giggle and hum.

“Hi.” she greets softy. You almost don’t hear her over the music.

“Hey.” Your voice is uncharacteristically quiet. She’s holding her drink, a gin and tonic, close to her heart and you wonder absently if that’s because her chest is aching like yours is now.

“How are you?” It’s small talk, you know, but coming from her it sounds genuine and you’re quick to believe it.

“I’m good.” You give a half-hearted laugh and smile, cram your hands self consciously into your pockets. “We start touring again soon.” It sounds so unexciting when you say it, and really you don’t feel that enthusiastic about it anymore as you stand there in front of her, but she smiles anyway and looks as if she’s about to touch your arm. She doesn’t.

“Good! You belong on the stage, Red Fury.” She jokes and you laugh at her expression and tone when she uses the old nickname, but something in you stabs at your heart and you have to make up some excuse about using the bathroom before that stab can rip you open in front of her.

You can see her in your memory even after you walk away, when the two of you had taken that whim of a trip right after graduation. Her fair skin burned the first day at the beach; you remember helping her out of her bathing suit later and the stark contrast of white and red. You remember your own olive skin browning in the sun and her half-hearted complaints too, but she had loved tracing your tan lines. You feel queasy thinking about it.

You’re not sure what it is you really want, but you seek her out again anyway. You remember, one of the first times you met her, the two of you had laid in the grass and talked. Just talked, for hours, until dusk. You don’t even remember about what anymore; it was so long ago. You remember wanting nothing more than to stay in that moment of simply enjoying eachother’s company. You remember her braiding your hair and sticking dandelions behind your ears, and the clumsy, chaste kiss you placed on her cheek when she leaned so close you could smell her body wash.

She always smelled of bubblegum, mint, and freshly cut grass. You were never really sure how, but it never changed and you never complained.

You have to see her.

You hear her laugh; it used to remind you of the rain; a gentle shower of sound that lulled you in to a calm, and when you find her in the crowd she is about to leave, a stranger’s arm around her waist. You realize then whatever it is you want is already far out of your reach.

You’re not sure what makes her turn her head, but she does, and looks right at you over the stranger’s shoulder. You stare at one another; she doesn’t break the eye contact and you refuse to. Words start to bubble in your throat; you should say something. You need to say something, but you swallow them anyway and shove your hands in to your pockets; you flash her a sad smile instead. She doesn’t return it; she turns and disappears out the door.

You buy yourself another drink instead of running after her.

You imagine later, on your drunken walk home, what your expression must have looked like to her. You can only hope, as you sing almost-forgotten love songs to the puddles and street lamps, that you will quickly forget about the residual feeling she has left in your gut, but you wake later to her voice on your answering machine.


	2. Chapter 2

You don’t remember the joke; it flies from your mind as soon as you see her across the bar, and your laugh dies quickly when you notice she is trying not to stare at you.

You haven’t seen her in a long while and you have to remind yourself to breathe when her eyes flit from the bottle in front of her to your face.

She’s dressed up. Suspenders run over her shoulders, holding up black trousers, and a plain, violet buttoned top hugs her frame. It compliments her in a way you have always admired. She enjoyed being well dressed often, but there was something about her in suspenders that had always made a part of you feel almost feral.

“I’ll be right back,” you say, a bit absently, and only give your friends’ questioning looks a glance before disappearing across the floor.

Her hair has gotten longer and it’s pulled over one shoulder, leaving an ear exposed. The tip is pointed slightly like you remember it to be; you used to tease her about being a fairy, thumb and forefinger tweaking the cartilage.

“Hi.” is all you manage at first.

“Hey.” she replies, and how strange it is to hear her voice again, face to face.

She smiles at you, nervously, and you subconsciously pull your hand in close to your chest, holding your drink like a protective charm. You had always loved her in purple; seeing her in it now makes you ache like you had those first weeks without her.

“How are you?” you decide to ask. It would be rude to just stare at her, as much as you’d like to.

“I’m good.” she laughs, smiles, and your stomach flips in response as she puts her hands in to her pockets. “We start touring again soon.“ she goes on, and you smile because you remember going to her shows. You had been star struck the first time you ever saw her on stage. Her hair had been wild, flying around her face as she moved to the rhythm, practiced fingers sliding across those steel strings. And then her voice. God, when her voice hit you that first time. You remember clutching at the collar of your shirt as you watched her. You couldn’t even move to the beat; couldn’t even smile at her when she had scanned the crowd and looked at you. A handful of shows later you found her backstage, a smirk on her features. She had led you away by the hand to run through the crowd outside the venue, laughing. You had laughed with her.

You go to touch her arm, overcome suddenly with the need to just feel her again, but you think better of it and hurriedly try to cover the faux pas,

"Good! You belong on the stage, Red Fury.” You regret using her old stage name as soon as it’s started spilling from your mouth, so you make your tone silly and pull a joking expression to try lightening the blow to both her and yourself, and she laughs, but quickly excuses herself and bids you farewell.

You hiss through your teeth before sipping your drink, watching her attempt to melt in to the crowd. She pulls at a suspender, subconsciously you suspect, and the movement makes you hum in to your glass, but you feel embarrassed and awkward and before you let yourself dwell on it you return to your friends. But you are distracted and their words hardly register in your ears. All you can think about is that long hair and running your fingers through it; gripping it as you press your mouth to her jaw in the dark.

You remember the first time she kissed you. She had dandelions in her hair and behind her ears; you had put them there. She was clumsy and it was quick, but it made your heart flutter in your throat. It was the same the first time she had ever whispered your name. You sigh in to your drink thinking about it.

“What’s up with you?” your companion asks, and his expression is bemused. You half-heartedly smile at him and shake your head.

“Nothing,” you mumble, because really that was what occurred: nothing. A simple greeting and brief pleasantries because it had been so uncomfortable. You were never good at small talk you suppose.

“Was is that woman?” he presses, and you’re quick to respond with a simple “no.“ The last thing you need is for him to think he has to defend your honor or something stupid like that. You are sure she could kill him in a fight; you’ve see her in action. The day she came home with bloody knuckles and a split lip had terrified you though. She brushed it off as nothing when you panicked; she still had her wallet and a few of the guy’s teeth to boot, but you had cried regardless when you bandaged her hands.

"Who is she anyway?” he asks after a moment of silence between you, and for a gripping moment you don’t know how to respond. There is a lot in that question and the answer isn’t a simple one. He’s nice, but quick in his words and slow in his understanding; he probably still doesn’t understand how uninterested you are. You don’t want to try explaining why you had needed to approach her or why the encounter had been so painfully short; it was your business.

“I’d like to leave now.” you say instead of answering, placing your glass on the bar. He goes to say something but you cut him off:

“I had a nice time, Brocko,” and place a hand on his arm. “I’m just not feeling well.“ He seems dejected a moment, but smiles anyway.

"I understand,” he says as you catch your other two companions’ attention. It had been a double date with two of your oldest friends and you feel a little bad to cut it short, but you’re not sure if you can sit through the rest of the night with her on your mind.

“At least let me walk you out?” He slips his hand around your waist as he asks. You should have minded the contact and any other time you probably would have flipped him on his back, but instead you laugh, because he really is sweet and he has this goofy grin on his face that’s asking if it’s alright that his arm is around you.

“Sure.” you say and cast once last look over your shoulder in to the bar. Your smile dissipates when you see her; it was why you glanced back, but you hadn’t been expecting to actually see her, especially looking at you. You’re suddenly very self conscious with this man’s arm around you, and she looks like she is going to call out to you. You silently pray that she will, but she just jams her hands in to her pockets and smiles and you’re surprised in a painful way; in an instant you can see all the times she ever looked at you like she is now. The most glaring in your memory is the time she found you with Guy.

You want to cry. You let Brocko lead you outside before you can start.

When you get home you spend too long staring at your address book, too long listening to old, dusty mix tapes.

Logically speaking, she shouldn’t have the same phone number. You shouldn’t call it and the voice on the answering machine shouldn’t be hers, but you do and it is. You shouldn’t hear her pick up the phone halfway through your bumbling voice message either, but it’s her voice, soft and just a little sleepy.

“Hey, Bonnie. What’s up?” she says, as if she didn’t actually interrupt you talking like an idiot on her machine, and just like that the gap you felt at the bar closes. She’s still, at her core, the woman you remember. The same one that used to take you iceskating, roughhouse with the dog, and play the ukulele on rainy days in just her socks and underwear. You still remember the last song she played like that. It hadn’t been a happy one.

“Just-…wondering how you are,” you say, but then add “really,“ because her expression while watching you leave was burned in to your mind and even though you know you shouldn’t feel guilty, you do.

"…Better, hearing your voice” she replies, and you smile.


End file.
